


Permafrost

by LittleGreenBudgie



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 02:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5810053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleGreenBudgie/pseuds/LittleGreenBudgie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shanlorel didn't have time for some Kirin Tor courier to pester her, not while she had new mercenary prospects and a cheap glass of whiskey in front of her.  After all, she knew full well that she wasn't going to Dalaran for any business, no matter what any messenger had to say.</p>
<p>Then he told her that her estranged husband was in the Violet Hold, and damn if all her plans didn't just fly out the window.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Permafrost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Order of the Shanai--Wyrmrest Accord](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Order+of+the+Shanai--Wyrmrest+Accord).



“Hey, you! Elf! Your name wouldn't happen to be Shanlorel, would it? Shanlorel Dawnsong?”

The woman looked up from her drink, arching an eyebrow. A cigarette smoldered from between her teeth, and a thin layer of dirt and dust covered her pale skin. But her eyes burned a clear blue, plainly marking her as quel'dorei, one of the last of the high elves. She took a long drag, tilted her head back, and breathed out a puff of smoke before looking back at the nervous Kirin Tor courier.

“Yes, I'm Shanlorel. Before you ask, no, I'm not interested. The Silver Covenant already tried talking me into coming back. I have no interest in your war on Pandaria,” she replied in a scratchy, yet steady voice. Considering the matter closed, Shanlorel turned back to her whiskey, swallowing a mouthful before returning the cigarette to her lips.

The courier shifted uncomfortably, but didn't leave.

“Begging your pardon, but I'm not here for that. I was told to find you and bring you back to Dalaran. Some prisoner in the hold wants to talk to you.”

The elf woman shrugged dismissively.

“That's none of my concern. I'm sorry you wasted your time tracking me down, but I have important matters to attend to here in the tundra,” she replied. Shanlorel idly wondered just who felt the need to see her, of all people, but she could dwell over it another time. She was pleasantly buzzed and about to make another push on Coldarra to find some answers she had long been needing. Whatever poor fool cried for her testimony in the Violet Hold wouldn't exactly be going anywhere, after all. They could afford to wait...assuming she even bothered. Something about Dalaran grated on her, leaving her jumping at shadows and never quite able to relax.

The courier cleared his throat again, and Shanlorel sighed.

“What is it?” she asked.

“H-He said you might not want to come. He told me to tell you, um, 'fly home, snow hawk,' I think it was. Er, ma'am, why are you--”

Shanlorel felt the blood drain from her face, and her heart contracted painfully in her chest.

“What did he look like?” she demanded, just shy of snapping at the messenger.

“Blood elf, sort of red-gold hair, kind of sickly-looking. Does that--”

“I will come,” Shanlorel said flatly. “Let me finish my drink and gather my things, and we can leave immediately.”

The courier nodded nervously.

“Should I—should I follow you?” he asked as she got to her feet.

“I need to change into my traveling clothes, so I would advise against it,” she replied without a hint of humor. “Let me get you a drink while you wait. I won't be long.”

In a minute, the courier was sipping at a mug of ale, and Shanlorel was hurrying up to her room. Her heart thudded erratically. _Fly home, snow hawk_ played through her head again and again in a voice lighter and more confident than the tremulous courier's. The words burned through her veins, making her nerves feel too sharp, too raw, and her skin felt too tight around her soul. She shivered and numbly put another cigarette between her lips, feeling her discomfort fade, if not entirely disappear.

_Fly home, snow hawk._

“It's not my home anymore, Den,” she murmured to herself as her eyes swept over her room and meager possessions. She traveled light at the best of times, and it didn't take long for her to gather her things. Shanlorel shrugged off her shirt, taking a moment to stare at her reflection and shake her head. Ice blue runes were tattooed onto her skin, running down her bare arms and following the curve of her collarbones, curling around the bottom of her ribcage and looping in bands on her wrists and biceps. She could see the rest in her mind's eye, the massive piece down her back and the runes along her legs and the backs of her hands, warding her from flame and magic and amplifying her own considerable skills. Without them, she wouldn't have survived as long as she had, but last Den'auril had seen her, her skin was still uninked.

She stared at herself a little longer, trying to remember how she had been before the Sunwell fell. Sixteen years was nothing to an elf, but it had dragged like an eternity to her, and the Shanlorel who lived then wasn't the same as the one who lived now. From her tattoos to her chopped-short hair, her scarred skin to her bony, too-lean body, she certainly didn't look like the same hopeful Farstrider she had been back then.

She sighed and pulled on her heavier leather tunic, absently buckling her armor on over it. Shanlorel took another drag off her cigarette—another change, another thing Den'auril wouldn't expect. She wondered how much he'd changed in that time, as well. Not enough, if he was calling her “snow hawk” like he had when they were still together.

“But you're the one who's answering to it,” Shanlorel told herself with a shake of her head. She buckled her sword belt around her waist and slipped her fur-lined cape around her shoulders, then picked up her dragonhawk's cage and shouldered her pack.

“I'm ready,” she told the courier as she walked back into the tavern proper.

His head jerked up, still half a mug of ale in his hands. He started stammering out something, but Shanlorel cut him off:

“Finish your drink if you like. I'm going to have another smoke and wait outside.”

She didn't usually go through tobacco half as quickly, but her chest ached and her head hurt, almost like she was still going through the mana-withdrawel that made her pick up the habit to begin with.

Her fingers moved through the motions of dumping tobacco on the rolling-paper while her eyes stared dully out at the horizon. The cold Borean wind clawed at her exposed face and fingers, and the northern lights shimmered high above in ribbons of green-blue-rose-gold, but the beauty that once moved her to tears barely even registered anymore.

She was going to see Den'auril.

Were she a more sentimental woman, she might have cried, but as it was, she just felt a deep, echoing emptiness in her ribcage, as if her head knew what was happening but her heart didn't. She hoped she could maintain that distance when she saw him, but Shanlorel was not one to lie, not even to herself.

The door swung open, letting out a jumble of sound and light and warmth, and then the Kirin Tor courier stepped out into the night. He shivered and huddled deeper into his cloak, a gaudy purple-and-gold affair emblazoned with the eye motif Dalaran's mages so favored, but it didn't seem to help much. Shanlorel's fur-trimmed cloak didn't look half so pretty, but it kept her warm.

She clapped the startled man on the back.

“Thank you for making the trip out here. It can't have been easy to find,” she said.

He smiled sheepishly.

“We, uh, may have used scrying to track you down. One of our mages apparently owes something to your, er, the prisoner, or we wouldn't have bothered, but...” he rambled, not quite willing to look her in the eye.

“Thank you all the same. Are we teleporting, or do you have a mount?”

“Hippogryph. Er, I have a hippogryph,” he replied. “It's about a day and a half's flight, so I figure we'll stop by Star's Rest, since you're, er, well, a lady, and--”

Shanlorel smiled like a knife being drawn.

“If you don't mind, we can fly through the night. No point wasting any more time.”

His eyes widened at her expression, but he didn't comment.

In a matter of minutes, his beast was saddled and ready to go. The courier went through another whole round of stammering and flinching when he realized they'd have to ride double, but soon enough, Shanlorel was settled behind the skittish man, her arms loosely wrapped around his waist and the stinging cold wind whipping by. To his credit, the courier didn't talk, leaving her alone with her thoughts, which circled round and round and always back to Den'auril.

Den'auril. Her husband. She hadn't given up on him, and she knew in her heart he hadn't, either. Den'auril always had been sentimental and unfailingly faithful in her. Now he was in prison and hoping perhaps that she might save him. Shanlorel sighed. She doubted she would be quite the knight in shining armor he imagined. Though given what she'd heard lately about the Horde's warchief, many of her former kin looked to leave. Maybe the Sunreavers themselves had jailed Den'auril, maybe he finally had come to his senses, maybe he meant to beg her to take him back. She didn't dare let herself hope, but the thought was a pleasant one.

Shanlorel shifted her weight to try and ease the stiffness in her legs. It didn't matter what she daydreamed. She would see soon enough what answers lay in Dalaran's magical prison.

The sun had already risen nearly to high noon before they reached Crystalsong Forest. The shattered trunks of its blue-glass trees floated in the air like so many baubles off a celestial mobile, and the sunlight glittered through them, refracting into thousands of dagger-sharp rainbows. Below, purple crystal stuck out of the ground like pieces of a shipwreck. Here and there, the painfully familiar rings and runes of abandoned surge needles lay in a scattered, broken mess. Above it all, shimmering faintly from myriad magical barriers, Dalaran hung poised like a great carrion bird.

It all made Shanlorel grit her teeth and ache for a cigarette. The courier seemed to have the opposite reaction, for he sat up a little straighter.

“We're almost there, Miss Dawnsong,” he said in a warm voice. “I can show you to the inn if you'd like.”

Shanlorel shook her head.

“I know my way around, but thank you. Who should I meet with to settle matters with—with the prisoner?” she replied, cursing inwardly as her voice broke.

“Just head to the hold. The warden's expecting you.”

She nodded, although she knew he couldn't see the gesture. Her legs ached from too long riding, but she didn't have it in her to rest. She would see Den'auril and figure out what he wanted, and then perhaps she could let herself sleep.

They hovered a minute over Krasus's Landing, watching as a dozen soldiers and traders and dignitaries waited their turn to land. The windblown flight master eventually waved them on, and, after a few questions and the courier's awkward goodbye, Shanlorel was alone on the city streets.

She smoked through two cigarettes on the way to the hold, her mind spinning in dizzying twists. Dread pumped through her veins like venom, making her muscles lock up and her breath come in short stabs. She wanted to see Den'auril, wanted it more than anything, but she feared all the same. Her tension reflected itself in the faces of the people on the streets; they walked in fearful groups, starting at the sight of her, and she realized suddenly that not a single Sunreaver stood among them. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, and she hurried on.

Her steps rang off the marble stairs as she slowly made her way to the gate. The warden, a severe-looking human woman, held out a hand to stop her.

“Who goes there?”

“Shanlorel Dawnsong,” the elf replied, casting off her hood to show her telltale blue eyes. “I'm answering a summons at the request of a Sunreaver prisoner.”

The warden nodded in recognition.

“Of course. We didn't expect you quite so soon, but I'm relieved to see you made it. If you wouldn't mind turning over your weapons and possessions, we'll be able to bring you in to talk with...Den'auril, was it?”

Shanlorel managed a stiff nod. She unclipped her sword belt and reluctantly handed it over, already missing the reassuring weight of her weapon at her hip. After a moment's hesitation, she handed over her flash bombs, throwing knives, and elementium-plated brigandine. At the warden's look, she unstrapped the dagger from her wrist, as well.

“The cigarette, too,” the other woman said apologetically.

Shanlorel sighed and stubbed it out, then handed over her tobacco tin. After a quick, uncomfortable moment of being frisked, she was nodded on through the doors. She felt twitchy and naked without her armor or her weapons, and, although she held a spell at the forefront of her mind just in case, she knew that her magic was weak compared to that of either the Kirin Tor or most of their prisoners. Her tattoos shimmered along the bare skin of her arms, a silent warning to any that would tangle with her, but she still felt antsy regardless.

Another gaudily-dressed Kirin Tor guard popped up from a side room, and with little more than a nod in greeting, he gestured for Shanlorel to follow him. All around her, she could see the wavering violet barriers holding in all sorts of dangerous beasts and beings, baleful eyes glaring down at her. Wards repeated along the walls and in the paving-stones in layers and layers of redundant protections, keeping those same horrible things safely in their cells. Shanlorel's footsteps seemed too loud as they echoed off the floor, and tension sparked off her.

With a wordless gesture, the guard stepped back, folding his arms in his sleeves and watching from a polite distance. Shanlorel's pulse hammered in her ears, and she desperately wished for another cigarette, a shot of whiskey, anything to dull her nerves.

Then a voice more familiar than her own hesitantly asked, “What is it, Warden? Could you not find her?”

Shanlorel swallowed her fear, felt it catch in her throat, then rushed to the cell.

“I'm here, Den,” she said, and her voice almost came out steady.

Her heart clenched painfully in her chest, and her throat burned with tears she wouldn't cry. Den'auril looked back at her with a tangled mix of emotion on his face, love and misery and fear running together like wet paint smeared by overeager fingers. He looked much the same as always, if a bit thinner and more gaunt in the face. He still wore his red-gold hair long and tied back in a sloppy ponytail, and he still kept the same messily-trimmed goatee. But his soft eyes glowed a nauseating green, and it brought Shanlorel up short.

This far back, plain iron bars held the prisoners, and without thinking, Shanlorel wrapped her hands around them, resting her forehead against the cool metal. Den'auril came to stand opposite her, his delicate hands holding just a few inches below hers. He still wore his old wedding band, and it nearly made her break down.

“Snow Hawk,” he murmured in Thalassian. “I was...I knew you'd come.”

She nodded. The familiar language, light as birdsong, made her heart ache almost as badly as the voice speaking it.

“I owe you that much,” Shanlorel said tightly. “What do you need, Den? I assume you didn't summon me just to talk.”

“No, I suppose I didn't. I...I need you to talk to Vereesa, or Jaina, if you can. Let them know there's been a mistake. I'm not a Horde soldier! I didn't have anything to do with this Divine Bell nonsense! I...They butchered dozens of us just because we were Sunreavers. Like there was no difference between Hellscream's dogs and peaceful scholars...” Den'auril said. His face was pale, his eyes wide.

Shanlorel stiffened, suddenly putting together the pieces of what had been troubling her earlier.

“Are you leaving the Horde?” she asked, not daring to hope let it be dashed to pieces.

“Not while the Alliance finds it acceptable to commit genocide. Maybe once, years ago, I could have, but...The time for choosing has long since passed,” he said with a shake of his head.

“I was never given a choice,” she replied, letting out her breath in a sharp snort.

Den'auril's mouth twisted in concern, and he slipped his hand between the bars, cupping her face. Shanlorel instinctively flinched back, but after a second, she sighed and leaned into his touch.

“You have a choice now, my beloved. You've seen what they've done to us! Can't you forget our petty differences and just come back? I've missed you so terribly...”

“Don't make this harder than it has to be,” she returned.

Den'auril hesitantly withdrew his hand, and she fought to keep her face blank.

“I still love you,” he murmured, his cheeks flushing a pale pink. “I'll always love you.”

Shanlorel grit her teeth and looked away.

“...I love you, too,” she replied quietly. “But nothing has changed since last we talked about this. I will not leech off of others' magic, nor condone those who do.”

“Things _have_ changed, or at least you have,” Den'auril returned.

“And if it weren't for your eyes, I would say you hadn't.”

He frowned, self-consciously bringing up a hand to touch his eyelids. That green glow, like fel-fire, made Shanlorel's skin crawl, and it hurt all the worse seeing it on Den'auril.

“Well, what about you?” he asked, his voice still kept low and gentle. “You're skinner than I've ever seen you, covered in tattoos, and you smell like an ashtray, my dear. Do you smoke now?”

It was Shanlorel's turn to look away.

“The destruction of the Sunwell was not easy on any of the quel'dorei, Den. You know what it felt like to go without mana for days, weeks, maybe. Not years,” she replied. She knew she didn't answer to her husband anymore, but all the same, she felt judged, threatened.

Instead, Den'auril nodded in understanding.

“I don't blame you. The pain was...unbearable. That explains the smoke, but...when did you get tattoos? They look almost like Rommath's.”

Shanlorel glanced down at the blue runes inked onto her skin, trying to remember anything about Silvermoon's grand magister. She had a vague recollection of a man with dark hair and red runes along his arms, but any attempts to snatch at something more detailed eluded her.

“They've kept me alive. I'm not a Farstrider anymore, but I'm still a warrior. It's a dangerous time to be in that profession.”

Den'auril nodded slowly, his eyes sweeping over the few sigils that showed along her bare arms and above the neckline of her shirt. He started after a moment, though, reaching through the bars again.

“This...” he said, touching a mark between her collarbones, almost like a cloak-clasp. The ink had been faded and washed-out so badly that it appeared little more than a blue smear underneath a raised red burn scar. Shanlorel stiffened. “This looks intentional. What's happened to you?”

She pushed aside his hand, tugging up at the collar of her shirt.

“It doesn't matter, and I wouldn't have the time to explain even if it did,” she replied, voice a little cooler than necessary. Her time with the blue dragonflight—or what pieces of it she could pull out of her hazy memory, indelicately shredded with magic until she couldn't be sure anymore what was nightmare and what was reality—had not been pretty. Den'auril didn't need to hear about the dozens of mages just like him that she had cut down, nor did he need to hear about the personal mark that the dragon Asrilgosa had needled into her skin, or how she had seared it off with the fire-heated flat of her knife.

Den'auril's mouth drew in a pained, tight line. That familiar sympathy of his made her long so badly to just melt through the bars and hold him in her arms again. He still smelled the same, like sandalwood and heartache. But he was sin'dorei, and she was a murderer. Nothing was the same, not really.

“Snow Hawk--” he started.

“I said it didn't matter,” she interrupted. “I've had worse nips on the hand from Snowstrike than this old scar.”

He reluctantly nodded. She could see in his eyes that he knew she was hiding something, but he didn't pursue it, not like he would have before.

“...So you've been fighting a lot, obviously. Fighting magic-users from the look of it. Are you part of the Silver Covenant now?” Den'auril asked woodenly. Shanlorel wanted to call him out on his clumsy change of topic, but she was just as happy to see it go.

“Something like that,” she answered evasively.

Den'auril's brows lowered.

“Shanlorel... Who or what have you been fighting?”

“Mages, mostly, as you said. Sin'dorei, some. It's nothing personal—I just happen to be well-equipped to fight my old kin,” she lied. No point mentioning the rush she felt at drawing a blade across the throat of a blood elf, or at watching a mage collapse, spell fizzling on his lips. Den'auril wouldn't understand.

His eyes widened and his hands faintly shook.

“But those are your friends--”

“Not anymore,” she flatly said. Shanlorel had killed plenty of elves that she had once known before they signed their souls over to the Horde. It hurt, the first few times, but her heart had grown cold to it now.

Den'auril leaned against the bars, eyes liquid and pain etched into his thin face.

“Then the same must apply to me, for I am sin'dorei now, too,” he softly returned.

Shanlorel slowly shook her head.

“You know I could never hate you,” she murmured, leaning in closer again. He mimicked the movement, and their foreheads touched between the gaps of the bars. Shanlorel swallowed thickly. “You always were the exception to all of my rules.”

“And you always were trouble,” he replied with a hint of humor, an echo of their old playful banter.

Shanlorel made a low, rough sound in the back of her throat, then leaned in. If she shut her eyes, she couldn't see the way his glowed green, and she could just feel his mouth against hers, feel the way he unhesitatingly pushed back against her, his hand threaded through her blond hair. She tried to put every last ounce of love and longing she had felt in the past sixteen years into that kiss, her pulse hammering in her ears and her breath coming quick and short. Den'aruil was desperate, needy, a frantic edge to his movements, and for just one moment she could pretend that everything was all right between them.

“Come back, Den,” she murmured against his lips. “Forget Alliance and Horde and all this. We can run away together, you and I.”

She heard his breath hitch.

“You know we can't,” he replied, words hesitant and fearful.

“I can dream.”

He drew back a hair, and her eyes fluttered back open. His own were half crossed to focus on her, and it should have made her laugh, but she could only stare dully back.

“It's a nice dream,” he said, not without a dose of bitterness. “But don't you ever miss Quel'Thalas, miss Silvermoon?”

Shanlorel grimaced.

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “When the weather's cold and the nights are long...I dream of aspen trees and eternal spring.”

“...And you're quite committed to not returning?”

Shanlorel sighed again, feeling nostalgia bite at her. She wondered if their little house was still the same, out along the forest's edge in the Eversong countryside, near many of the other Farstriders' homes. She thought fondly of the garden she'd cultivated out front, and how the tree beside the western window reached just close enough for her to scale it and vault to the roof when she wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Den'auril was right—she missed it horribly. Northrend was no place for an elf.

She stared at him, feeling the familiar tug in her chest. Wasn't she sick of eking out a pitiful existence in the frozen north, of living off bloodlust and nicotine, of never knowing if this battle was the one that would end her? Hadn't she proven her point? She could be a Farstrider again, roaming the wilds by day and curled up with Den'auril by night. She could sleep in her own bed again, warm her hands by the wood stove in the living room, look at her husband's paintings along the wall...

Then Shanlorel thought of the bedroom in the back of the house that she still couldn't go near, the one that Den'auril had had to clean out while she sat outside and trembled. Talara's room, their daughter's room, bringing memories of gargoyles descending on helpless ships, of everything in Shanlorel's life slipping away in a single moment. She grit her teeth against the pain.

“Until every last sin'dorei has atoned for what they've done, I will not set foot near Quel'Thalas,” Shanlorel said.

Den'auril's thin shoulders slumped.

“It's a nice dream,” he echoed.

“Is this going to be us forever, Den? Doomed to stand on opposite sides of a war we never signed up for, decades between meetings?”

“I don't think my heart could bear it,” he murmured. “But if you won't back down from your position on the mana-tap, there's nothing I can do.”

Shanlorel shook her head slowly.

“I'd die a thousand deaths for you, beloved, but this? This I cannot do. So if you will not forsake the sin'dorei, I cannot do anything, either.”

They stood in silence for a long while. Shanlorel felt a dull, heavy ache in her chest, like her heart was pumping steel instead of blood. Her breath came too quick, and her fingers shook. She needed Den'auril, needed answers, but in that moment, what she really wanted was a goddamn cigarette. She shifted her hand and closed her fingers over his hand, giving him a gentle squeeze. He stared back at her, lips half parted, brows drawn up in high, miserable arcs.

Den'aruil broke the quiet with a soft sigh.

“So there's nothing you can do here? Will you leave us in this prison?” he asked.

She shrugged helplessly.

“You're technically prisoners of war. I don't have near the influence to help.”

“I didn't suppose so, but I had hoped. Where are you going from here? Back to this mage-hunting of yours?”

“...The Isle of Thunder, actually,” she said, making the decision a split second before speaking. “Victims or not, your Sunreaver friends are our enemies, and the Silver Covenant is throwing their lot in with Jaina. I'm going with them, and woe betide anyone who stands before my sword.”

Den'auril pulled back, eying her warily.

“You seem... excited,” he said slowly, eyes widening.

“I've always liked a good fight, Den. You know that.”

“Enjoying fighting's one thing. Enjoying killing is another,” he told her with a shake of his head. For the first time, Shanlorel heard bite in his words, and she jerked her hand away from his, her shoulders set in a furious line.

“Things have changed. You, me, the world... Killing is something I'm damn good at. I don't expect you to understand.”

“...You're right, Shanlorel. You have changed,” he said quietly. “What happened to you?”

She sighed.

“I already told you—it doesn't matter. It's over and done now.

“Someday,” Den'auril started. He paused, swallowed thickly, and started again: “Someday, when this is all over and behind us, you'll tell me, won't you?”

Shanlorel smiled bitterly.

“Someday,” she agreed. “But for now, it is what it is, and you and I... If I were you, when Lor'themar gets out all out of there...I would stay far away from the Isle of Thunder,. You know I won't lay a finger on you, but I doubt the rest of the Silver Covenant has any such compunctions.”

His mouth compressed into a thin, tight line.

“All right, then,” he said softly.

Shanlorel wanted to kiss him, to feel him against her, but she knew equally well that she wouldn't have the strength to stop herself if she started. She licked her lips instead, and he nervously mirrored the motion.

“...Goodbye, Den'auril.”

“Until we meet again, Snow Hawk,” he murmured back, and his words stung in her chest like sparks from a forge-fire.

“...Until we meet again, Den,” she agreed, heart pounding too quickly in her chest. Her eyes lingered on his familiar, thin face, and he stared miserably back. She didn't want to remember him like this, hurt and green-eyed and disappointed in her, and so Shanlorel forced herself to turn away, fingertips faintly trembling and pulse pounding in her ears.

She nodded to the guard.

“I'm ready to go,” she said, voice tight.

She heard a quiet, choked noise behind her, and if she tried hard enough, she could pretend it didn't sound like a sob.

Face impassive, the guard nodded in return, then he lead the way back through the twists and turns of the hold. Shanlorel followed moodily at his heels, teeth gritted and shoulders tense.

After what felt like an eternity, she had her armor and weapons back and a cigarette between her teeth. For once, the usual soothing feeling of the smoke gathering in her lungs didn't calm her anxiety at all. Her nerves still felt scrubbed raw, the smell of Den'auril fresh in her memory, and she could still almost feel him against her. She paced furiously up and down the Eventide like a caged leopard, in turn unable to take seeing the Violet Hold or the Silver Enclave before her. She knew she wouldn't head back to the hold again, for she couldn't bear to see Den'auril's hurt look or sickening green eyes again. Going to the Enclave and formally enlisting in the Isle of Thunder campaign seemed to be too big a step to take for such a miserable afternoon, though.

Tension sparking off her, Shanlorel made her way to the inn instead.

“Glass of your cheapest whiskey,” she muttered to the barkeep. The woman was another high elf, something that still made Shanlorel's chest ache with bitter familiarity. She missed being among her own people, even if it meant staying in Dalaran. Going out into the Isle of Thunder, camping with other quel'dorei and cutting down Sunreavers... It would help her get her head back on straight, she was sure.

Shanlorel stretched out, lighting another cigarette as the other elf slid her a drink. She pushed the thoughts of Den'auril and Quel'Thalas and their old home from her mind, downing the whiskey in one go and ordering another.

She would bury herself in this conflict and cut a bloody swath through her troubles, same as she always had, and Den'auril... Den'auril had already chosen his own path.

 


End file.
